The only thing ethanol provides is votes for US politicians. There's an episode of the West Wing (Series 7, can't remember which) where the arguments are quite clearly made, in a far better manner than I could make them.

Indeed so. But the Left believes in it, so starving people and burning even more fossil fuel to produce ethanol is what has to happen. So also other nonsenses, like wind farms, and South Korea sending 30,000 tons of grain to feed the N Korean army.